Linkstew

Awhile back, I mentioned that my parent's ISP, which had been bought, had been bought by Earthlink. When Onemain bought Lightspeed, the transition was nice and smooth, without so much as a change of settings required.

But then Earthlink came along, and I am so less than impressed with the way this second transition is being handled. First of all, they emailed instructions about what the new PPP login would be. Um, it's a good thing my family checks their email often, I think.

But that's barely the ridiculous part that angers me: Under Lightspeed, and subsequently Onemain, my parents paid $24.95 a month, got unlimited dial up access, and got five email addresses (all five of which, I should note, are used regularly (me, mom, dad, brother, family)). Okay, fair enough.

So then onemain/earthlink/whoever sent out a transition email to their customers, informing us that the plan that best fit our needs was the "Earthlink Light" plan. Quick summary of the earthlink light plan: $6.95 a month for six hours of online time, plus $1 for every additional hour, and 1 email address.

Um.

A quick check reveals the "Earthlink Unlimited" plan, which clocks in at $21.95 a month for unlimited access and 8 email addresses. Lightspeed only ever offered that one plan, and hence, anyone who was ever a Lightspeed customer going through this transition should have been given the Unlimited plan by default, with an option to downgrade if so desired, instead of being autofuckingmatically downgraded. Heck, the Earthlink unlimited plan actually features more email addresses for $3 less a month.

Besides the fact that we clearly have five email addresses that the Light plan doesn't support, my brother is online more than I am. My parents probably would have paid more for online access for a month than they pay for rent.

I can't fathom what kind of moron planned this transition, unless it was some guy who was trying to figure out how to make the Onemain purchase pay for itself in a single month. And then when everyone bitched, they could just say "Oh, we emailed you what we were doing. But we'll fix it now. But you still have to pay, because you didn't get your account changed at the time."

I'm only tangentially involved in this, and it just makes me whistling mad. I can only imagine how all the old school Lightspeed customers feel. So much for support and service. Apparently it's all about "How can we fuck over our customers?"

And the worst worst part is that of the national ISP's (including AOL, MSN, Earthlink, et cetera), I by far like Earthlink the best.

I fear.

This week, various Jamba Juice locations will be giving away free smoothie on certain mornings. For details, check out this page. Don't forget to donate what you would have spent on that smoothie to charity, though. =)

I'm really amused that the Jamba Juice right off of Telegraph (as close as you can get to the heart of the Berkeley Campus) is having their free smoothie morning on the same day as Cal Day... That seems like an unfortunate choice, because most of the people out and about that Saturday morning will not (yet) be Berkeley students, meaning that Jamba Juice'll be giving smoothies to people who aren't going to come back for a repeat purchase at that store unless they actually come to Cal.

Way back in the day, when I first hopped on the Internet, I signed up with lightspeed.net, a local ISP. I've had a lightspeed.net email address for as long as I've been on the internet... Last year, I believe, lightspeed was bought out by OneMain, a larger ISP -- I forget their coverage, but it was larger than lightspeed. The funny thing to me about this is that at one point lightspeed was actually an expanding company. But now, OneMain has been bought by Earthlink. I don't know why I even linked to lightspeed and onemain, because lightspeed already redirects to earthlink, and I'm sure onemain will redirect to earthlink soon. It strikes me as strange that Bakersfield now has no local ISP. Bamf! Gone!

At least bsii@lightspeed.net is still working. Occasionally an important message still drifts across that account -- I wonder how much longer it'll last? I wonder how much longer there'll be any little guys around? Will it some day just be reduced to Earthlink, MSN, AOL, and the cable and dsl providers? Sad questions, but it looks like that's how things are going these days.

Billy, you should get to be good friends with Pill, because for the rest of your life, you're going to be stuck in this pill based culture. This Article on msnbc is very scary -- Schools demanding that parents give their children Ritalin. I wonder when it'll be revealed that whichever drug super power owns the name Ritalin is funding children's television and bribing these school officials...

Who, me? No, I'm not paranoid. Just a little bitter. Sure, I pop aspirin all the time, but I believe that they work. If someone replaced my apsirin with sugar pills, my belief would work just as well as the aspirin. Unfortunately, I can't replace them myself, because then my mind wouldn't let the trick work.

Belief is a damn powerful healer, but in this "advanced scientific age," people no longer believe in belief or other forms of healing -- they need "advanced" medicines and surgeries -- I'm just as vulnerable to this as anyone else, but I can recognize it in myself and others.

It's a shame to see pills being forced upon little billy as soon as possible. "Get him hooked on the program," the drug makers say. "Make him believe in us."

This is a good article talking about the fact that California's Power Problems aren't because Californians are Power Gluttons. My, that's reassuring. So if we're doing so good on electrical use per capita, then why are we having this power crisis? Well, a former co-worker tells me that it's because PG&E are dumbasses. More precisely, they sold old power plants and didn't build new ones. Further, he told me that if something extreme didn't happen soon, then this "crisis" is going to go on for years. Oh, that ain't good.

PG&E: Dumbasses.

Not only is this article a great general discussion of the California power crisis and the dark days that lie ahead, but it also features the phrase "Whistling in the dark," which I can only assume was in reference to TMBG. If the lights go out then you can only do what you know how to do well, and that's be you. Be what you're like. Be like yourself. And so I'm having a wonderful time but I'd rather be whistling in the dark.

And as chance would have it, I was listening to a bootleg of one of TMBG's Flood Shows when I read that article.

The one thing I do pretty much every weekend without fail is get groceries. So today, as I was waiting around inside of Andronico's, I thought back to the Albertson's near my old house in Bakersfield and the video rental section that was in the front of the store. After thinking about it for awhile, I realized what an insidious idea it was to get people to the grocery store more often. As I mentioned above, I do my grocery shopping on the weekends, so I make it to the store every six or seven days. However, Albertson's only rented for two or three days. So if I rented a movie, I'd have to return it back much sooner than I'd otherwise return to the grocery store.

But as long as I'm at the store returning my tape, I might as well pick up a few things I need, right? Clever bastards...

As I walked between seven and a half hours of class today, I saw a flyer for eOdin, "The only online source for readers". Now, how does advertising help Odin exactly? Seems to me, they need to go for the course instructors to get readers at Odin, and once the readers are at Odin, then they'll make money because students have to buy their readers. Whatever.

What kind of conspiracy is it where bad credit is better than no credit at all? At any rate, I now find myself in that "worse credit" bracket simply because I have no credit. Heck, I couldn't even sign up for my cell phone service in my own name thanks to the stigma of no credit, and so I had to use my dad's name.

So I've spent a couple of hours today reading about credit cards, and in general, it irritates me. I was looking mainly at Bank of America, because I do my banking there, and CitiBank, because my dad came in with a credit card offer for my mom from CitiBank today. But I guess one is in my future, because as it is I have "worse credit." And besides, look at the hassles no credit card has caused me between the "PowerBook Incident" and the "cell phone incident." A credit card will make me feel dirty, but at least it should make my life easier.

I really do like Amazon, even if their commercials are a little scary. However, the performance I've seen from them on my last two orders has made me want to take that Amazon.com chorus by their sweaters and shake them violently. Oh, well, the commercials alone made me want to do that, but I still want to shake violently.

You see, back in October I ordered a couple of birthday presents for my mom and brother, expecting to get them before I left for Bakersfield. Only, as it turned out, they arrived about 15 minutes after I left for the train.

So on Monday, I ordered some Christmas presents, because finals had been keeping me busy. Since I needed to get them by Thursday, I selected items that "usually ship within 24 hours", ordered at 10 am on Monday, and paid extra for next day shipping.

Let's just say they didn't ship in 24 hours, or even 48 hours or even 72 hours. I just got an email TODAY, Thursday, at around 3 pm, saying that my order had shipped. Now I understand that it's the holidays and all, but honestly, if your customer is paying extra money for next day shipping, then you either better not charge for the next day shipping after you didn't ship in a timely manner, or you better ... Let me shake your choir violently so I don't have to listen to them anymore.

When you enter a grocery store, I either head immediately towards the produce department, or I find myself there with no other immediate option. I probably head for produce when I do have an option because that's what's comfortable... that's what I'm used to.

Except for the Vons in Lake Isabella. There the produce comes at the very end, which kind of makes more sense, because that way your veggies won't be crushed by cheese, or something. Instead, at the Vons in Lake Isabella, I head the other way first and find myself, as I recall, among breads and other baked goods.

At Andronico's in Berkeley, after you brave the Gauntlet of Produce, you find yourself thrust into the waiting arms of meat. And once you pass the meat, you meet the Dairy section head on.

The point of all this is that at every grocery I can think of off the top of my head, the perishables are on the periphery of the store... All around the edges, there you find the things that have to constantly be refreshed. In the case of milks, it makes sense, because they push the milk through from behind, so that the newest milk is at the back. And meat makes some sense, because that way if you have a manned meat counter, you have room to put the man. But why produce? I can't think of a reason to put the produce on the edge.

Enlighten me?

You know, if anyday should be a national holiday, this should be it. Celebrate democracy, etc, etc, etc. Make it a big happy afair and make people really want to get out and vote... As it is, it's just another day on which you should vote. Imagine if everyone had the day off, so all you could do is celebrate democracy and vote? It'd make more sense than, say, celebrating christian holidays and not jewish holidays.

Cody's books has the right idea. They're offering 10% off to anyone that can show proof of having voted.